ALL NHS worker were “heroes” during the Covid pandemic – and we stood on our doorsteps and clapped to prove it. Among the heroic teams were the staff who dealt with infection control.

These workers dive in to parts of a hospital that are at risk from infection and perform not just “deep” but “ultra” cleans to prevent infection and disease spreading to other parts of the hospital – and other parts of the population. At Guy’s & St Thomas’s, they are known as the “Rapid Response Team”.

This is an important job, but the skills needed to do it are often under-rated, and the dedication needed to do the job properly is often overlooked by local managements. Infection control workers are among the lowest paid in the NHS – and the majority of them are from the Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities.

Infection cleaning staff at Guys and St Thomas’s NHS Trust have been asking management to improve their working conditions. The concerns their union, Unite, has raised include:
•there are no adequate rest areas at Guys hospital
•the rest areas at St Thomas’s have no ventilation
•facilities for staff to wash after work are inadequate
•there is a lack of liaison with the workers’ union, Unite, over the use of harmful chemicals
•management use temporary “bank” staff instead of hiring staff on permanent contracts and training them.
The staff had already called off planned strike action so that talks could take place, but nothing has been resolved. Staff will therefore take five days of new strike action, beginning on Monday, 26th February.

Unite’s General Secretary, Sharon Graham, said that the Trust was treating the Rapid Response Team with disdain. “For these workers to not be able to clean themselves properly after finishing work or to have humane conditions to rest in is a disgrace.”

You can help by raising awareness of the Rapid Response Team’s dispute: post a link to this article on your social media.

●Read the Trust Management's reply to this article:
Guy's & St Thomas's deny strikers' allegations

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